[tootie]

I think 80% of complaints about capitalism are complaints about the fundaments of economics. Audience is scarce, network effects are scarce, advertisers are scarce, quality contributors are scarce, brand recognition is scarce. How do you acquire all of these at enough scale to make a compelling product and sustainable platform? I don't see how ActivityPub actually does any of that. I can very clearly see how venture capital and/or short-term shareholder value are actively harmful.

I think there's two avatars I'd look at for having "solved" most of this. One is Craigslist. They don't really occupy the same place in the world they used to, but they scaled by orders of magnitude without changing their core identity. And they did it because Craig Newmark was content to walk away with $100M and his reputation in tact rather than chasing every penny. The other is Wikipedia. Probably the single most valuable thing on the internet and operated purely as a non-profit. A non-profit that rakes in like 10X it's operating budget in donations. Neither of these do everything right, but they work. And they do it with a very centralized framework for operations that sets clear boundaries in which their volunteer contributors can operate. I really see that as a more promising goal. We need a fully non-profit internet. Ones that set really clear and explicit guidelines for usage and are beholden to their mission above investors. But also, organizations with publicly accountable leaders who set policy and stick to it. And leaders who can still run their orgs like a business with a tech team, a marketing team, accountants, HR, lawyers and all that jazz.